Palgrave Games in Context – serie

Based on four years of interviews and game recordings from locations spanning the United States, this book offers a journey that explores how role-playing games use a combination of free-form imagination and tightly constrained rules to experience those realms.

Based on four years of interviews and game recordings from locations spanning the United States, this book offers a journey that explores how role-playing games use a combination of free-form imagination and tightly constrained rules to experience those realms.

?This book provides an introduction to the Forge, an online discussion site for tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) design, play, and publication that was active during the first years of the twenty-first century and which served as an important locus for experimentation in game design and production during that time.

?This book provides an introduction to the Forge, an online discussion site for tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) design, play, and publication that was active during the first years of the twenty-first century and which served as an important locus for experimentation in game design and production during that time.

This book directs critical attention to one of the most ubiquitous and yet under-analyzed games, Minecraft. The book examines how Minecraft players engage in a form of gameplay that is uniquely intergenerational, creative, and playful, and which moves ambivalently throughout everyday life.

This book directs critical attention to one of the most ubiquitous and yet under-analyzed games, Minecraft. The book examines how Minecraft players engage in a form of gameplay that is uniquely intergenerational, creative, and playful, and which moves ambivalently throughout everyday life.

This book brings together essays on game history and historiography that reflect on the significance of locality. Game history did not unfold uniformly and the particularities of space and place matter, yet most digital game and software histories are silent with respect to geography.

This book brings together essays on game history and historiography that reflect on the significance of locality. Game history did not unfold uniformly and the particularities of space and place matter, yet most digital game and software histories are silent with respect to geography.

Video Game Chronotopes and Social Justice examines how the chronotope, which literally means “timespace,” is an effective interpretive lens through which to understand the cultural and ideological significance of video games.

Video Game Chronotopes and Social Justice examines how the chronotope, which literally means “timespace,” is an effective interpretive lens through which to understand the cultural and ideological significance of video games.

Instead of departing from the medical model of disability that informs a wide range of publications on “disabled” gaming and that preconceives users as either “able-bodied,” “normal” or as “disabled,” “deficit,” or “unable to play,” our central premise is that dis/ability is not an essential characteristic of the playing subject.

Instead of departing from the medical model of disability that informs a wide range of publications on “disabled” gaming and that preconceives users as either “able-bodied,” “normal” or as “disabled,” “deficit,” or “unable to play,” our central premise is that dis/ability is not an essential characteristic of the playing subject.

​The recent and dramatic development of China’s economy and international political muscle is especially pronounced in the country’s video game industry. Now the largest of its kind in the world by gross revenue, the Chinese video game industry impacts every player in the global game market and has begun to directly influence the nature of the video game medium itself. From its conceptualization of the player as a category and commodity, to its approach to the design, development, and marketing of products and services, the Chinese game industry is engaging in a complex, innovative, and fascinating reimagining of the video game as a cultural and industrial force.The purpose of The Chinese Video Game Industry is to help introduce and investigate this industrial and cultural powerhouse. The book’s contributors array the industry across its history, economics, organization, politics, and cultures, documenting its rise, exploring its operational, cultural, and aesthetic characteristics, and capturing its context vis-à-vis the global media landscape. In so doing, the contributors provide a robust resource for anyone interested in studying, building, or even simply appreciating games.

​The recent and dramatic development of China’s economy and international political muscle is especially pronounced in the country’s video game industry. Now the largest of its kind in the world by gross revenue, the Chinese video game industry impacts every player in the global game market and has begun to directly influence the nature of the video game medium itself. From its conceptualization of the player as a category and commodity, to its approach to the design, development, and marketing of products and services, the Chinese game industry is engaging in a complex, innovative, and fascinating reimagining of the video game as a cultural and industrial force.The purpose of The Chinese Video Game Industry is to help introduce and investigate this industrial and cultural powerhouse. The book’s contributors array the industry across its history, economics, organization, politics, and cultures, documenting its rise, exploring its operational, cultural, and aesthetic characteristics, and capturing its context vis-à-vis the global media landscape. In so doing, the contributors provide a robust resource for anyone interested in studying, building, or even simply appreciating games.

This book examines the discourses surrounding the rise of the cryptogaming industry and the use of blockchain technology in videogames.

It includes case studies that analyse the mechanisms used by game producers, composers and sound designers to “characterise” and represent different identities to broad audiences of potential players, as well as how the players perceive these sonic inputs.

“Designing A Feel for the Game is an important intervention in the world of game design. It offers a way to engage affective and emotional labor in a way that propels gaming forward. Wilcox does an excellent job showing how exploring feeling in games can help make design better, play more engaging, and mechanics more ethically sound and responsive to gamers.”--Kishonna L Gray, Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan, USA; author of Intersectional TechThis book offers a practical method for making meaningful and memorable games by design. Drawing on over a decade of teaching critical game design, Steve Wilcox translates the social and cognitive science of meaning-making into applied lessons and concepts for designing a feel for your game. Across eight chapters and a range of topics—including embodied cognition, anthropology, social psychology, affective science, persuasive design, and applied ethics—readers will learn that the mechanisms we already rely on to make sense of and give meaning to the world around us are the very tools we need to make games that feel meaningful and memorable to play.Designing a Feel for the Game features practical lessons illustrated with various examples from digital, analog, and live action games. Each chapter includes numerous applied activities developed and refined over a decade of teaching, including individual and group exercises as well as a major design challenge.

Feminism in Play focuses on women as they are depicted in video games, as participants in games culture, and as contributors to the games industry. Contributors analyze the interconnections between games and the broader societal and structural issues impeding the successful inclusion of women in games and games culture.

Queerness in Play examines the many ways queerness of all kinds—from queer as ‘LGBT’ to other, less well-covered aspects of the queer spectrum—intersects with games and the social contexts of play.